An old mountaineer, past fighting, who had guided Mr Popham to Cattaro, offered me his escort, and Spira, who was at the door with her mule, went into an ecstasy of delight at the prospect of showing her dear native crags to "our lady," as she called me. I hastily put together needful clothes for myself and Laurie, old linen, a change of sheets for my dear patient, tea, arrow-root, and other provisions, and a selection from the precious medicine-chest. These were packed on one side of the stout mule, and a seat for me was devised on the other side. Happily for the animal, I was as light as a feather in those days. Seeing Mr Popham pale and fatigued, I urged him to remain at our house till his strength was recruited, and rejoin us the next Tuesday, when he would easily find a competent guide in the market-place; but he rejected this advice with vehemence, and after swallowing some refreshment and writing several letters to Ragusa and England, declared himself quite ready for a start. My heart warmed to him for his love of Laurie. Up, up the zigzag path I had so long panted to explore; up, up, we climbed, but under circumstances how different from those I had pictured to myself! No Laurie at my side, enjoying every beautiful thing in earth, air, or sky, showing me what to sketch and how to sketch it; but vague, uneasy thoughts of him on his feverish couch and among half savage people. The channel of Cattaro lay below us, its jagged shores, studded with pretty villages; on all sides were craggy grey peaks, rising one behind the other, a sky of hazy blue arching over all. My guide Giuro was full of apologies for the roughness of the track we rode upon, telling me the old Montenegrin legend "that at the Creation, the bag which held the stones to be distributed over the earth, burst, and let them all fall on the Black Mountain." The road certainly was as bad as possible; but my mule advanced sturdily, by jumps and jerks, till we reached the top of the pass. There we were, I am afraid to pay how many hundred feet above the sea, but overhanging it so completely that a pebble dropped from one's hand fell into the waves. The Ragusan steamer looked like a nutshell from our eminence.